Upgrading & Migration

I am looking for a table that lists every function and script step for the various compatible Filemaker versions. So, one such table would be for FM 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0, another would be for 7.0, 8.0 and 8.5. The tables would list the functions/script steps on the left as rows and the versions as columns. The purpose of this would be to avioid using functions or script steps that the client's version does not support. For example, I have several clients that use FM 5.0 and 5.5. I don't remember which functions and script steps that were introduced in 6.0, and so I may inadvertantly use them. The same goes for the newer versions. I have looked for som…

Hope someone can help , I am upgrading from filemaker pro and server from 4.1 all the way to 8.5 .I am running mac OS 9 and I am upgrading the computers to the new IMACS (OS 10) , so I was just wondering how hard this will be or if it's even possible. I would like to copy all the files into the file maker 8.5, or has any tried something like this.

I recently converted from FileMaker Pro 6 (FMP6) to FMP8 and find that the rearrangement of fields in layout is incredibly slow when using click and drag. It's almost as if it's delayed somehow. Is this a known problem? I realize that there are all kinds of ways to align easily with a click of a button (new functions), and I'm using them, but I just don't understand why the click and drag method seems to have gone whacky in the new version. Any thoughts out there about this?? :qwery: Thanks!

Hi- I'm developing an app that would be distributed as a run time. The data is not part of what's distributed - user would enter their own data. I'm trying to think ahead to when I want to distribute an improved version of the runtime in the future. How do you get data out of one version and into a modified one? Some kind of export then re-import? Right now (early in design) I am not using any external files. Should I be? Thanks for your help. Michael

There's a lot of papers on migrating from pre-7 FM, but I haven't found anything on going from 7 to 8.5. I'm wondering if there are any variations in scripts, calcs, commits, error trapping, etc. that need to be considered? I have a small workgroup solution that's very complex. I've tested it as much as I can in 8.5 and haven't encountered any surprises, but I'd appreciate anyone's experience in this. It's a small company and the application is mission-critical. So we have a large risk with a small amount of resources available to allocate for the upgrade. I'd like to just upgrade the five Macs (OS 10.3-4) to FM 8.5 and run the files, but if anyone knows…

Forgive me for I am about to sin. I am about to mention MS Access on a FMPro forum!! I just wondered if anyone has experience of MS Access compared to FMPro and whether they would like to comment to help me decide what to do? I am not a computer whizz but about 8 years ago created a database in FMPro4 for my business. Over the years it has grown to 20 odd related files and includes a diary and everything that my business needs with the exception of accounts. I converted to FMPro7 some while back but have not done it properly with the result that it doesn't function quite as well/look quite as good as it did with FMPro4. So I am now ready to take the plun…

Hiya. I'm moving from an old 4D environment, and C++, to FM, and having some problems finding equivalent solutions to common problems. In fact, i'm sure that some of the solutions in FM will be totally different. I'm a little overwhelmend, even with the big fat Que book. Lots of little options dialogs and not a lot of overall sense of what's the right thing to do... For example, let's say I've got a comic-book database. The comics records each have a foreign key which is the title of the comic. The title record data isn't stored in the comic record; just the foreign key is kept. There are many titles which have the same (or similar) names. When the user wants to…

hi i started working in filemaker in version 3 (i think) and developed a management system for my business that consisted of all of 50 related files. when i migrated to version 7, i was obviously able to to rewrite the system into a single file. at the time, however, i thought it would help me to use 2 related files instead of one (one is primarily contact management and the other job tracking). now, i feel there may be advantages in merging these to files into a single file. is there an easy way to do this, or am i in for a major operation? i should add i am now on 8.5 advanced

We have a 5.5 database that we loaded in FM 8.5 and saved as a fp7 database. When we load this database in FM8.5, it takes forever to load before we get to the first window, approx 1 minute. The file is 5 Mb. Is there a way to find out what is slowing the loading (step, log, debug, etc ?). When we load the original 5.5 database in FM 5, it loads normaly. Thanks.

Can anyone tell me the pros and cons of why I should or shouldn't migrate our Filemaker Pro 5.5 server & database to our new Xserve running 10.4.8? Any help would be most appreciated. ;)

I am in the process of deploying a converted solution. Users are logging in from Citrix MetaFrame connection. In v6, the display looked fine. In v8, it is grainy and ugly... Any ideas?

hello..have an fm4 and want to upgrade to 6.0 unlimited on a diffrent machine..I have installed 6.0 on the new server but I don't know how to move all those files from the 4.0 fmserver.. I haven't had any contact with the database before so have little controll over what to do with which files anyone??

I finally want to upgrade from Filemaker 4 and say goodbye to OS 9; I'm using it for simple invoicing. I was told that the existing data and templates would migrate to Filemaker 6 easily but not beyond, as a result I tracked down a brand new Filemaker 6 on eBay. Before I break open the software, can somebody else confirm I'm doing the right thing? Thanks for any help.

We have a fairly complex system. Screen redraw on a mac osx 10.4.7 works fine, but when using it on a windows xp home machine, it takes forever the screen to redraw. If you are clicked in a field on one record and try to go to another record while still clicked into that field, the screen takes forever to redraw in windows. We just upgraded from v6 to v8.5. never had any problems in v6. Have been using the system for about 10yrs now. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Dave

Hi, I have seen at least one post in this forum that suggests that the behaviour of relationships in FM 8 differs from FM 6. If there are no target records in another table then with FM 8 the target table would not display a found set of 0 records but rather all records. I am almost certain that I have experienced exactly the same when I was briefly reviewing a huge FM 6 solution that I had converted to FM 8 just for testing. But when I tried to reproduce that behaviour with a simple FM 8 database it turned out to be the same as it was with FM 6 - a source record that has no associated target record shows 0 records when GTRRing to them. Since we are just se…

So a coworker wanted to work on a fp5 database using fp7, and started the conversion process, but aborted (cleanly) because she was unsure what it would do. Now the fp5 databse has dissappeared, and no fp7 has appeared The conversion log looks like this: 10/19/2006 10:50:10 AM, MAVU.fp7, 0, Conversion started. 10/19/2006 10:50:11 AM, MAVU.fp7, 0, Version: Pro 5.0 - 6.0. 10/19/2006 10:50:14 AM, MAVU.fp7, 0, 6 file references were converted. 10/19/2006 10:50:19 AM, MAVU.fp7, 0, 5 relationships were converted. 10/19/2006 10:50:23 AM, MAVU.fp7, 0, 9 calculations were converted. 10/19/2006 10:50:48 AM, MAVU.fp7, 0, Conversion aborted. no error messag…

We have recently purchased a site license for FileMaker Pro 8 for our users. We have users in Mac and Windows environments and I want to push the msi file through Group Policy to those Windows users. The installation went fine but when I try and run FM, I get the following message:

I hope this is the correct area to post this question. I have looked around and cannot find anyone else with this question. I recently purchased Filemaker Pro 8.5 for the Mac. In transferring my database from my old FilemakerPro 3...to 8.5, in certain fields a zero is added to the calculated number (ie: 14 becomes 140). It does not do this in all calculations. Any suggestions?

Is there any written or real world guidelines regarding performance. We have a database that has been converted from v3 to v8.5. It could use a complete redesign for performance reasons and will eventually happen, but looking for quick win performance boosts. I can use Advanced and create a single file version of it (instead of 5 related files) by importing the tables and fixing relations, etc., Question: Is there a noticeable difference in performance with a single file solution compared to a multiple file (same files, same calcs, etc., etc.) ? Just wondering if it's worth the effort or if I should just start rewriting.... Any insight would be…

I've test converted some solutions from v6.4 to 8.5. Once in v8.5 the screens look horrendous because of what the conversion did to the fonts. Is this problem likely to be fixed in a version update or do I have to manually fix all 60 screens in my solution to make them look nice again?

Ok folks, here a tricky problem: I have a customer database in FM 6 and one in FM 8.5. Every time that a new customer is created he gets a serialnumber. Example: If I create a customer in FM8 he gets nr 100 then I crate a customer in FM6 and he should get nr 101. Is it possible to let both FM get the numbers from a unique source and upgrade the source every time a customer is created in one DB or the other? Ops, almost forgot, both databases are running on different machines with the proper server installed. Who is the genius that can help with this?

I am work ing crossplatform and have 6 database that i would like to "merge" into one. I have figured out how to import fields, scripts but am having trouble moving all the layouts and relationships. Is there a way to do this either withing filemaker or with a third party solution. M

Hi: To start, I'm a newbie to Filemaker, so thanks for bearing with me: My department has a little server holding several one-file 5.5 databases which we have to 1) convert to FM 8 and 2) move to a server controlled by IT. IT charges for hosting by the file, and allows us a limited number of FM files in any case. The question: Can these separate databases be converted to 8 and all be housed in _one file_ (with a front end of some sort slapped on it)? Could this be done as a more or less straight conversion, or would we have to create a new file in 8, set up the tables and layouts from scratch, and then import the data? Or something in between? …

Basically, I am looking for tips, and references on how to use a filemaker file as a scripted "import engine" to handle the moving of data from .mer files to a new set of files without creating a large mess... basically using the engine file itself to handle all of the functionality. I understand scripting and relationships fairly well, my main trouble is updating the new files, currently held as tables in the engine only by file references. I think I just need a push in the right direction, but will take all the help I can get. :-) John

Good evening, I have a quote layout similar to an average invoice document with repeating fields ...it is in filemaker pro version 6 ...all layouts print well ...however when I convert it with fm7 the repeating fields do not print properly ...these fields are vertical fields and only about 1/3 of them print the lines across the page ...however in fm8 the conversion works well ...my prob is the machines at work cannot run fm8 as they are not winxp sp2 .....is there a prob with fm7...I have updated the FM7 installation to v3 .. any assistance would be appreciated ......even if I delete the layout parts in fm7 ..and recreate them in fm7 format they …

Hello all, I am on Panther upgrading to Tiger. I have FM 7 and would rather not have to as long as 7 works well with Tiger. Any feedback on this issue is appreciated. Thanks!

I have read a recent post regarding access passwords after converting from 6 to 8, but I still can't access the new files after converting; it is asking for a username and password. Any combination I have tried from the previous advice does not work. I am working from another location using FM8 and I have the FM6 data files. I don't have access to the original install cds for FM6 so that I can open the files and remove protection, although I don't think they are password protected at present. Can anyone help with this please? Alternatively I can make the files available for someone to look at if required. Thanks very much Lyndon

Hello I was quite dismayed when opening my Filemaker 7 database in Filemaker 8 Advanced to find that my navigation tabs created in 7 no longer show up as tabs but buttons. I know there is a lot of talk about the new tabbed feature in v.8 but as I understand it, you cannot use them to navigate to different layouts. Is there a way to import the old tab feature in 8? or make the the new tab feature work as it did in the old v.7 way? I can't believe Filemaker would disable something like this but did they? I have some screenshots if nyone needs to see what I'm talking about... Thanks for the help

I have a runtime solution bound and released in fmpadv8. The files are based on a seperated model. If i were to upgrade to fmpadv 8.5 and issued a rebound version(using the original bind key) of the user interface file would this work with the other files or would all files in the new bound version need to be distributed? Please bear in mind all other files are just data and calcs only no layouts.

I was having a hard time finding any comprehensive step by step instructions to convert a multi-file FMP 6 system to a single-file FMP 8 system. One of the systems I wanted to convert is very complex (60 tables, hundreds of scripts, hundreds of layouts). Anyhow, I ended up writing my own step by step instructions while upgrading some of my smaller systems, so that when it came to upgrading the larger system, it would work much better. I thought I'd share the instructions here, in case anyone else was interested: FMP 6 multi-file to FMP 8 single-file Theye've worked well for me, and I'm now on to the bug-fixing stage of this very complex system. …

I'm getting ready to update from 7 to 8.5, and I'm wondering if the printer issues have been resolved. The main issue I had was bieng able to print to two differnt printers in the same script, retaining the settings for each printer. And did I read correctly that in 8.5 advanced you can import former 5.5 files into a multi table solution? Keeping the field names, types, etc??

For the record, I started with FM7, and now doing conversions and therefore now learning how the older version worked, or should I say didn't work . . . From what I have found, the behaviour in FM 6 is that field validation is ignored by scripts. After converting files to FM7+, script now adhere to the field validation, and scripts will error mid-script due to the set validation. Is there a way to allow validation for data entry by the user, but ignore validation in scripts in FM 8.5 ? I understand why validation 'should' be done in scripts, but I'm trying to minimise the change in user experience when upgrading . . . Thanks in advance, Mav.

hi i've just bought fp 8.5 and 5 licences so we can share stuff around our new office. we have 20 or so small database files (fp5) and two larger ones (around 1.2 mb each). the small files have all converted without a hitch but the two larger ones open up after conversion with a dialog box asking for account and password details. i've tried entering my mac account login and password (didn't work obviously) and using Admin and no password didn't work either. the files open in fp6 with no password so why would fp8.5 want one? and how do i go about removing this restriction? many thanks in advance. max

Hi everybody, It's been a while since I had to deal with FM. Last big thing was upgrading from 5.5 to 7 more than a year ago which was a lot of work! Now the office I'm in thinks about upgrading to 8 or 8.5 So basically - is it more like purchasing, installing, converting files and ready to go...or what drawbacks come with it?? Is there a documentation available how to upgrade? Is it worth going with 8? Some say 8 is less stable, go with 8.5? And I assume upgrading to FM Server 8 (8.5) is unavoidable too... I'm sitting here and try to get back into my own FM developement-work...so any experience is highly appreciated ;-) Cheers, Stefan

can I have FM 6 and 8 installed on the same machine at the same time ? how about running at the same time ? Thank you !